Re: [engelang] Xorban ni'u(kV)

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have had some trouble following the development discussion and final
> intended result with respect to these operators.  Would someone be willing
> to kindly explain the exact function of these things and provide some
> examples?
>
> ni’u …: “ni …” rather than/compared to/with respect to/as opposed to “nu
> …”
>
> ni’ukV …: “V is rather …”, “V is … rather than not …”

Consider first the class of binary predicates bbbake such that
whenever "la ccca le ddde bbbake" is true then "la ccca le je ccce
ddde bbbake" is also true. Let's call these predicates "(binary)
quantifiers".

Then notice that we can always replace "la ccca" by "la je ccca nu
ddda"  and "le je ccce ddde" by "le je ccce ni ddde" so that the x1
and x2 of a quantifier can always be filled by two almost identical
expressions, differening only in ni/nu.

This replacement seems illegitimate if are trying to preserve form, since you are replacing ccc by two different things.  I admit that I don't see the point of this, since I don't see the difference between farmers that have donkeys and farmers that have donkeys whether or not they beat them. I suppose it is somehow to get around the problem of donkey sentences, but I don't see exactly how it is done in a satisfactory way -- at best it seems to say that there are more farmers that have donkey they beat than there are farmers that don't have donkeys they beat (including those with no donkeys at all).  Ah, but I see that you have inserted the ni'u inside the scope the quantifier, making the interesting case even less like the pattern.  The issue of fusion within scope differences probably needs some examination.  It may be that this technique actually works,  but it is not clearly justified by this explanation.

Now let's define the unary version of a quantifier such that it gives
the same meaning as the binary version when applied to an _expression_
with "ni'u" standing for the "ni/nu" of the x2 and x1 of the binary
version. So for example, if "mstake" means "most A are E", we can
have:

la prna le li ckli nlceki mstake
A/person(A): E/( I/chocolate(I):like(E,I) ): most(A,E)
Most people like chocolate.

= la je prna nu li ckli nlcaki le je prne ni li ckli nlceki mstake
= la je prna ni'u li ckli nlcaki msta
Peeople who DO like chocolate are most (people).

So instead of  "la prna le li ckli nlceki mstake" we can say "la je
prna ni'u li ckli nlcaki msta", which uses one fewer variable,

But adds a superfluous connective of some sort and changes the predicate without warning -- not good logical moves.

 but
also we can say "la je frmra je se xsle pnsake ni'u drxake msta",
"farmers who own some donkey and DO beat it are most (of the farmers
who own some donkey whether they beat it or not)", which doesn't have
a "mstake" form without repetition.

Since in principle there could be more than one quantifier "ni'u"
could be tied to, we can say "ni'uka" instead of "ni'u" to make sure
it is tied to "msta".

Unary quantifiers are not the only kind of predicates that can make
use of a ni/nu comparison. Another example we considered is prfrake "A
prefers E" perhaps reduced from something like prfrakeki "A prefers E
from among I":

lo je ckfa ni'u ldra prfra'aka
"I prefer my coffee with milk."
(From the choices of coffee whether with milk or not with milk, I
prefer coffee WITH milk.)

I think more generally "ni'u" can be thought of as a focus marker, for
example tied to something like an implicit "I make assertion x rather
than more general assertion y", where x is the one with ni and y the
one with nu.
  Do we also get nu'i for the negative preference?
co ma'a xrxe


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